The People's Republic of Fub

Yesterday, we let the cats out like usual. But when Mikan returned, she had a tick embedded on her left shoulder! Obviously, something needed to be done.

We do have the full paraphernalia to remove ticks, and we've used it a few times -- on ourselves. The Dutch woods are certainly not tick-free, and geocaching brings you off the beaten paths. You know: tall grass, shrubberies etcetera. Getting a tick is not merely a hypothetical issue then! We also always wear pants with long trunks when we go geocaching, no matter what the temperature is.So we did have a tick pincet. All that needed to be done is to apply the pincet to the tick on Mikan and then extract it.

But this took us three tries, with several hours in between. Mikan isn't too fond of being picked up (neither is Yuzu), and when we started to pick at the tick, she got hurt (some fur got stuck in the pincet) and she started to flail around. After that, we needed a bit of a 'cool off' period because she was panicked and we couldn't catch her again.I find things like that quite hard. It's for the good of the cat (obviously), but you can't tell her that she just needs to sit still of a bit and it'll be over in a minute.

Third time's the charm, and I was able to extract the tick intact. Mikan was mewling quite plaintively, but she stayed put (relatively speaking). This morning, she seemed to have forgiven us already.

Let's not tell them yet we're going to take them to the vet for their yearly vaccinations on Monday...

This is why one of the only things I teach my cats is to trust me to pick them up and hold them. I teach them by first teaching to eat the best treats from the palm of my hand. Then I move on to feeding them while or after holding them. And of course a treat after the removal of the tick or the cutting of the claws or the trip to the vet. I'm sure you can teach your cats to trust you.

They have never been a fan of being picked up -- you know what happened to R. when he cornered Mikan and picked her up.They do eat treats from our hands, and it's a good idea to combine that with picking up and handling! Operant conditioning works!

Meanwhile, I pet the cats extra hard when they come back inside, to see if they've picked up a new tick. They don't seem to mind that at all! ;)